Amazon’s Power Play: Nielsen Data As A Gateway Drug

I think it’s fair to say that authors will like this, that publishers should really have been making access to sales data more freely available to authors anyway and that in general access to the data will be both useful and enlightening to some authors.

I think it’s unfair to say that not allowing access to Nielsen data showed how foolish/badly-run/outdated the industry was. Most of the time I’d wager the publishers’ agreements with Nielsen had strict rules about dispersing such data and who could access the information where.

I’m interested to see that the debate has centred on sales and how this makes authors more conscious of sales as in the LA Times Jacket Copy blog:

In recent years, individual authors have increasingly been asked to take part in the marketing and promotion of their own books. Publishers have faced budget cutbacks, and the Internet has provided authors with more ways of reaching readers — and potential book buyers. Amazon sees the Nielsen BookScan data as a tool to that end. “The geographic view of print sales will help authors identify trends to help their promotion efforts and enables authors to develop more effective methods for reaching the widest possible audience,” Amazon’s Kinley Campbell wrote in an e-mail.

Just in time for Christmas, Amazon may be turning authors into an army of booksellers.

But I’m also certain that this misses the mark. Think about what this move has cost Amazon. First off, money. And I’d wager quite a chunk of money, it’s no mean service they have rolled out to authors. Secondly it will have pissed off publishers somewhat. Now you might say Amazon don’t care about that, but I say they do up to a point, and that point is where the amount of trouble caused by pissing off publishers is outweighed by the amount of good this does Amazon.

So what good DOES this do for Amazon? Well it creates a compelling reason for an author to open an Amazon Author Central account. It enables Amazon to gain rich metadata about those authors to help them increase sales. It probably enables Amazon to cross promote other author services like CreateSpace and Kindle’s DTP. In that sense, the data will be Amazon’s lure to authors who will be reluctant to forgo the stats once the have them (and boy do I know the power of stats) and so may be inclined to pool their service deals with one provider. This will be especially important if (as seems to be the case) digital sales increase and more and more authors move independent.

It also gives Author Central a USP over say Facebook, Twitter, Filedby or some other platform that an author might wish to spend time building a network from. In that sense it is a play to aggregate author information and enable Amazon to stay ahead of the game.

This is not Amazon being generous or simply throwing its money around wastefully, this is clearly a well thought through long-term strategy to create a great reason for authors to have a good Author Central profile. Who knows, perhaps soon only authors with proper pics and biogs will have access to the data.

It’s less about making the writers booksellers and more about making them data-entry clerks and using the aggregated data to sell books and selling the authors other services too.

I don’t know if I’d say it cost Amazon money to release this info. BookScan data would be the only possible cost, but realistically, I don’t expect that was pricey, as it also advertises for the service (thus why Amazon only shows the last 4 weeks). Regarding the sales rank and sales history, this is data they have been storing for a while apparently, and if I can spend 300 hours building out NovelRank.com over the past year, I’m sure in 100 hours or less they could have added those features, since they only needed to get into their own database to see the numbers.

I’m not certain you are right about the cost of the data. Two major issues. The first is that this may be marketing at folks who would never pay for the full product and so be wasted. The second is that one of the key points of value of Nielsen is that access to it is limited. Information in this case, is power. Sure they can withdraw that access at any point, but not without damaging their brand. So for the cost of potentially devaluing the brand Bookscan would rightly have charged some kind of premium!

I love this article, I’ve read it several times and I end up disagreeing with different parts every time I do!

On the one hand the structure of the industry is certainly a problem, but I’d point to other reasons why then what Thompson points to.

On the other his dismissal of the pricing issue is too flippant and off-hand. Readers don’t care about overheads after all and even if they did, taking so many out results in cheaper books is their logic.

On top of which (and I know this is a short piece) he points to “bad” changes in the industry structure without discussing how these changes increased the opportunities to purchase books for readers and what’s more, a broader array of books than even the army of independents could ever have made available.

All in all, I get the sense his book would annoy me as much engage me and I’d throw it down in disgust! :)
Eoin

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